George Washington's Surprise Attack

by Phillip Thomas Tucker

  Many of the German Regiment’s officers and men, including those with high rank, had served in prewar militia units in both rural and urban areas and in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Captain Benjamin Weiser, born in Pennsylvania in 1744 and the son of German-born Conrad Weiser, who had negotiated peace treaties between the Iroquois and the Pennsylvania Colony and led the Pennsylvania Regiment with skill during the French and Indian War, had served as an officer in the Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, militia battalion. Other German Regiment officers had been members of the well-trained Baltimore Mechanical Company of Militia, the Baltimore Town Militia Battalion, the Baltimore Artillery, and the Frederick County Militia. Some of Haussegger’s more seasoned officers also benefitted from prior European military experience, such as Adjutant Louis Van Linkensdorf of Pennsylvania. He had served as an officer in an elite Swiss Regiment on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia. All in all, therefore, Washington’s German Regiment benefitted from an exceptionally wide-ranging, high level of military experiences from both sides of the Atlantic because so many officers had served in European armies, during the French and Indian War, and in militia and Continental service.27

  And a good many experienced soldiers also solidified the German Regiment’s enlisted ranks for the Trenton challenge. Twenty-three-year-old Private Thomas Wenick was known as an excellent marksman. Standing more than five foot, six inches, he was a veteran hunter, or jaeger, from the dark, evergreen forests of his Teutonic homeland.“A talkative fellow,” Wenick loved playing cards.28 Another common German soldier of Washington’s German Regiment was a young man born in Hesse-Cassel, thirty-two-year-old Private John Man Flicket. Hailing from the rich farm lands of his transplanted, adopted homeland near Maytown, in the Susquehanna River country of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, he was “tall [with], long black hair, much given to smoking & drinking.”29

  Washington also now possessed experienced German-born leaders in his main strike force beyond the German Regiment’s ranks. Lieutenant Colonel Baron Friedrich von Weisenfels now led around eighty soldiers of the Third New York Continental Regiment, Sargent’s Brigade, which advanced down the windswept River Road with Sullivan’s First Division.30 And two veteran companies of Samuel John Atlee’s Pennsylvania Battalion (regiment), which had been hard-hit at the battle of Long Island and its survivors were now attached to Stirling’s Brigade, consisted of large numbers of German American patriots. The unit’s commander, Samuel John Atlee, a hardened French and Indian War veteran who had been born in Trenton, was captured during the battle.31 In battling against the odds under Stirling’s command after the Long Island fiasco, Atlee’s Battalion of Pennsylvania State troops then lost more good men at Fort Washington. Less than three months apart, these twin disasters resulted in a merger of the fortunate survivors of three battalions of Pennsylvania State troops, who now marched in Stirling’s Brigade at the head of Greene’s column, just behind Mercer’s brigade.32

  Likewise, capable German artillery officers also led their cannoneers forward down parallel roads beside their slow-moving field pieces in both Greene’s and Sullivan’s columns. Captain Sebastian Baumann was the foremost commander among these Teutonic artillery leaders. He now commanded eighty artillerymen of the New York Company Continental Artillery in Greene’s advancing First Division. Captain Baumann was born in the ancient city of Frankfort-on-the-Main, Hesse-Cassel, on April 6, 1739. He was one of Washington’s most educated and well-trained artillery commanders in Greene’s Second Division column. Smart, versatile, and talented, Baumann had received an excellent education as a military engineer at Heidelberg University, Germany, on the Neckar River.

  He first migrated with his family to America as an idealistic young man, settling in New York. Here, Baumann had made his American dream come true, thriving as a thrifty merchant. He was commissioned as an artillery officer with a major’s rank in Colonel John Lamb’s New York Artillery in early 1776. Representing a solid vote of confidence, Baumann had been entrusted by Knox to remove the last American cannon from New York City during the evacuation. He was the last artillery officer to leave the doomed city, with all of his guns in tow: no small accomplishment under trying circumstances. Clearly, Captain Baumann was a well-trained officer and just the kind of artillery commander that Washington could rely on the morning of December 26, when everything was at stake for America. Most symbolically, this exceptional Germany-born artillery commander was destined to be yet firing his well-aimed cannon upon a cornered opponent, Cornwallis, who had just recently chased Baumann’s unit across the Delaware in the New Jersey withdrawal, during the siege of Yorktown in October 1781.33

  In addition, German American soldiers of the Lutheran and Reformed faiths, Protestants, Catholics, and even Hebrew, were scattered in lesser numbers in virtually every regiment in Washington’s Army, except for those commands raised in areas, which were relatively few, entirely devoid of German populations. Both Protestant Germans and German Jews served in Maryland units from Baltimore, where a large and prosperous German and German Jewish community thrived and where many of these men had been leading merchants. These German American soldiers possessed a deep-seated love for liberty that extended back to Old World Germanic roots.

  Indeed, such nascent republican Germans had early opposed autocratic rule of centralized government, which explained in part why they had first migrated to America. In the June 2, 1775 words of one such revolutionary-minded German, motivated by the enlightened concepts of Freiheit von (the uplifting from oppression in order to become vogelfrei, or “free as a bird”), who fled to America’s friendly shores to escape religious persecution, high taxes, ruling elites, government corruption, and autocratic abuses of central Europe: “We cherish civil and religious liberty as a precious gift vouchsafed to us by God.” Therefore, combined with the inspirational words of Chaplain John Conrad, a Reformed pastor of Lancaster County and now serving as the German Regiment’s faithful chaplain, lofty Age of Enlightenment idealism burned brightly in the hearts and minds of the Continental soldiers of Washington’s forgotten Teutonic Regiment and other units and was especially so on the freezing morning of December 26.

  Washington’s German Americans were also highly motivated by the desire to defend their Pennsylvania home communities. These Germanic Continentals hoped that Washington’s desperate offensive gamble would deliver a devastating preemptive blow so that the Hessians and British would be less likely to invade, pillage, and burn down their own Pennsylvania homes and make their families homeless in wintertime, including for many German Americans from the appropriately named Heidelberg township in Berks County, Pennsylvania. The township of rolling farmlands in the Schuylkill River country of southeast Pennsylvania had been named after the cultured city, distinguished by Heidelberg Castle that overlooked ancient Heidelberg and one of Europe’s oldest universities, nestled along the Neckar River in southwest Germany. One such determined Teutonic soldier from Pennsylvania who now marched toward Trenton in Washington’s German Regiment was Sergeant John Kredelbach. As a sad fate would have it, he was destined to be “hanged by the [British] regulars” in October 1777.34

  However, the many contradictions, ironies, and complexities of the German experience in America ran exceptionally deep and were closely intertwined, defying long-existing stereotypes and simplistic generalizations. Consequently, some of Washington’s Germans possessed second thoughts—like some of Rall’s Hessians who had already faced German American soldiers, such as Pennsylvania brothers Lieutenant Henry Bedinger and fifteen-year-old Daniel Bedinger, who had helped to decimate the charging Hessian formations with blistering fire from their deadly Long Rifles at Fort Washington—about attacking their fellow countrymen, who after all might have been their own relatives and who were mostly common tillers of the soil back in Germany like themselves.

  In general, officers of both Washington’s German Regiment and the Rall brigade at Trenton belonged to a class more elevated than the lowly privates in the ranks. Ironically,
some identical divisions that separated Hessian officers, including those men of lower nobility, from the common Hessian soldiers and middle class noncommissioned and officers of common background also separated officers of Haussegger’s Regiment, including members of a New World aristocracy, from the enlisted ranks of mostly yeomen farmers of middle-class status.

  But, of course, the average American fighting man in Haussegger’s command was better off economically and possessed a far more promising future than the common Hessian soldier from impoverished Hesse-Cassel. Rall’s enlisted men in service were little more than exploited pawns, who hailed primarily from lowly peasant families that barely scratched out a meager existence on the poor soil of Hesse-Cassel. While many of Rall’s common soldiers had been struggling members of economically ruined communities yet to recover from the widespread devastation of the Thirty Years War, some of Rall’s top officers hailed from some of the best families in Germany. As could be expected in representing an Old World environment and hierarchical society, class differences and divisions between officers and enlisted men were wider in Rall’s brigade than in Washington’s German Regiment, where more enlightened egalitarian thought existed. However, many of Rall’s and Washington’s officers also shared comparable common middle-class backgrounds, and even humble origins in some cases.

  Two Teutonic soldiers of the German Regiment from Maryland, Privates David Barringer and Michael Beiker, deserted Washington’s German Regiment on Christmas Eve. Almost certainly, these two soldiers were the two mysterious American deserters who reached Trenton to inform Rall and other top German officers, who could not speak English, in their native language that rations for three days had been cooked by the Americans and that an attack from Washington was soon forthcoming on Trenton.35

  Commanding the well-trained German Regiment, Colonel Haussengger was one of Washington’s German-born soldiers who were beginning to have serious misgivings about fighting against his countrymen. He had narrowly survived the disastrous Canadian invasion when Montgomery’s desperate assault on snowy Quebec ended in a bloody fiasco in late December 1775. For such reasons, Haussegger, a hat maker by profession who possessed a nice house, a hatter shop in the market town of Lebanon, and a five-acre farm located just outside the agrarian community, was becoming more of a reluctant revolutionary by this time. In a case of history coming full circle, a good many of Haussegger’s Germans had originally migrated to America for freedom, and now that liberty was threatened not only by the British, but also by the Teutonic soldiers garrisoned at Trenton.36 All the while during blizzard-like conditions of December 26, the young men and boys of Washington’s German Regiment continued to trudge south toward Trenton while an eerie silence, hanging heavy like the ever-diminishing chances for Washington’s success at Trenton, yet dominated Greene’s lengthy Second Division column to reflect the solemn mood in the ranks of hundreds of German Continentals, who were about to engage in battle for the first time on American soil.

  Late Night Celebration at Abraham Hunt’s House

  Postmaster Abraham Hunt was one of Trenton’s most respected merchants and leading citizens. And like the equally opportunistic Stacy Potts, Hunt had grown wealthier by trading freely with both sides in a war that brought new economic opportunities. Clearly, Trenton’s leading commercial and businessmen knew not only how to preserve their gains, but also how to profit from the foreign occupation of their home town.

  A festive Yuletide gathering was held on Christmas evening in Hunt’s finely furnished parlor at his two-story, brick home located on the northwest corner of King and Second Streets. As one of Trenton’s wealthiest merchants who possessed a well-stocked cellar filled with only the finest liquors and wines, like richly flavored Madeira and even heavily fortified beer so favored by Germans, Hunt was well liked by the Hessian officers. Known as much for his hospitality as for his high-grade Virginia tobacco (perhaps even Washington’s own Mount Vernon tobacco at some point) that was made readily available to Hessian visitors, Hunt was not a Tory, however. Therefore, Hunt’s property was never confiscated by American forces at anytime during the war years.

  Playing a risky, high stakes game but one at which he was skilled, Hunt merely feigned loyalty to the Crown to preserve his considerable wealth and high community status. In truth, Hunt was a lieutenant colonel of the Hunterdon County, New Jersey, militia regiment commanded by Isaac Smith. And on this snowy Christmas night, he provided invaluable service to Washington by throwing a lavish supper party well supplied with good food, freshly killed local fare, such as turkey and thick venison (white-tailed deer) steaks, and, of course, unlimited amounts of alcoholic drink. Instead of retiring to his headquarters at the white-painted Stacy Potts’s house, a wooden structure unlike the Hunt House, for a good night’s sleep, Rall attended the Christmas party. Here, he enjoyed himself thoroughly, drinking alcohol, smoking only the best tobacco from a long-stemmed clay pipe, and playing card games in the parlor. Partaking in a common diversion that took his mind off the war’s horrors and the deaths of old friends, Rall especially enjoyed gambling at the old French game called Pharaoh (shortened to Faro) that was now at its height of popularity in Europe. Faro was not embraced by the American public until the nineteenth century.

  When Rall finally returned to his King Street headquarters in the early morning hours, he carried in his pocket a handwritten note from a Tory farmer, a German named Mohl from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which warned of Washington’s impending attack. He had seen Washington’s men forming up for the Delaware crossing, and immediately made his way to Trenton. A black servant had played an unintentional role in helping Washington to achieve surprise on December 26 by having refused to allow the homespun Pennsylvania farmer to step into Hunt’s well-heated parlor filled with finely dressed merry makers of a higher class than the lowly agriculturalist. Therefore, the Loyalist farmer had hastily scribbled a brief note containing vital intelligence about Washington’s impending attack on Trenton. Engrossed in his gambling and the good times away from the war’s vexations and without anyone present who could translate English to German, Rall merely placed the little note in his vest pocket without reading it after the vital message had been handed to him by the “negro waiter.”37

  But this popular chapter of the Trenton story has been endlessly overemphasized by historians in order to demonstrate the folly of the Hessian commander and by Americans to reemphasize the failings of a truly “Contemptible Enemy” of America, which succeeded in shifting blame from his high-ranking British, including Howe, and German superiors, who had repeatedly ignored Rall’s desperate calls for reinforcements. By this time, Rall had already received sufficient warnings from spies and British intelligence and he had responded accordingly. After having received Grant’s Christmas Eve warning of Washington’s impending attack, Rall had dutifully taken precautions and even sent out patrols, including one bolstered by a field piece, and kept hundreds of his best troops ready for action.

  Therefore, while Rall celebrated Christmas in the soothing warmth and mirth of the Hunt mansion, he was very likely the only German in Trenton doing so on this miserable Yuletide. Everyone else in Rall’s garrison maintained firm discipline by obeying orders, following specific assignments, and getting much-needed rest after the constant alarms, mostly false, over the last few days that left consecutive sleepless nights for the Hessians. Now working to Washington’s favor, Rall’s entire garrison had been aroused and turned out on December 22, 23, and 25 to meet either real or imagined threats. In fact, this Yuletide was the least festive and most sober of Christmas seasons in the lives of Rall’s young men and boys now so far from home.

  However, the most fatal flaw that now dominated German thinking at Trenton was that so many recent warnings had been sounded that the Hessians now had already become the victims of the crying wolf. Indeed, after having responded to the fire of Captain Wallis’s small raiding party of Virginians on the late evening of Christmas Day, the Hessians had returned to their w
arm quarters, which provided a most comforting shelter from the storm. Rall felt secure that this latest threat from the accurate Virginia sharpshooters was the one that he had been warned about by Grant, whose letter arrived on Christmas morning.

  With the storm raging with new intensity in the predawn darkness that convinced Rall that Trenton was entirely secure from any attack, Major Dechow, commanding the Knyphausen Regiment, basked in the Christmas spirit in his loneliness. He took pity on his young soldiers, who were now near their wits’ end and utterly exhausted from so many past alarms and seemingly endless duties. Dechow, therefore, decided to cancel the usual predawn patrol for December 26 that would have placed 125 men and two cannon at the ferry house picket post just below the Assunpink, where the now-thwarted Ewing and his Pennsylvania militia had planned to cross the Delaware at the South Trenton Ferry just below the town. After all, everyone knew that these ragtag rebels, so often humiliated and vanquished so easily for months on one battlefield after another, were led by the “Poor Devils as the rebel generals are,” and that their undisciplined soldiers were nothing but a “cowardly banditti.” Most of all, British leadership believed that the American soldiers simply lacked the moral courage to fight like true, professional fighting men, especially in regard to launching an offensive strike.

  In keeping with the American longtime stereotypical image of Hessian soldiers as Old World barbarians (which was as distorted as the common view of the British soldier as nothing more than an unthinking robot by American propagandists and then later-day historians), one of the most enduring myths of the Trenton story was that the Hessians were roaring drunk in wild celebration of Christmas, almost as if still in the port of Bermerlehe—from where the Germans had first embarked for America—on the North Sea, or in a noisy Rotterdam tavern or a favorite bordello: the condition that has long allegedly made them vulnerable to Washington’s attack on the morning of December 26. Of course, most Hessians certainly favored good German lager beer, but very little of this popular beverage existed among the Trenton garrison. And the fine wines for sale by Trenton’s gouging American merchants, selling to patriot and loyalist alike, were much too expensive not only for the average common soldier, but also even for Rall’s officers.